Icarus at Lookingglass

This is an interesting post-9/11 meditation on our need for flight (among other things) from Updike's collection Americana and Other Poems (Knopf, 2001):

Icarus

John Updike

O.K., you are sitting in an airplane and
the person in the seat next to you is a sweaty, swarthy gentleman of Middle Eastern origin
whose carry-on luggage consists of a bulky black briefcase he stashes,
in compliance with airline regulations,
underneath the seat ahead.
He keeps looking at his watch and closing his eyes in prayer,
resting his profusely dank forehead against the seatback ahead of him,
just above the black briefcase,
which if you listen through the droning of the engines seems to be ticking, ticking
softly, softer than your heartbeat in your ears.

Who wants to have all their careful packing—the travellers’ checks, the folded underwear—
end as floating sea-wrack five miles below,
drifting in a rainbow scum of jet fuel,
and their docile hopes of a plastic-wrapped meal
dashed in a concussion whiter than the sun?

I say to my companion, "Smooth flight so far."
"So far."
"That’s quite a briefcase you’ve got there."
He shrugs and says, "It contains my life’s work."
"And what is it, exactly, that you do?"
"You could say I am a lobbyist."
He does not want to talk.
He wants to keep praying.
His hands, with their silky beige backs and their nails cut close like a technician’s,
tremble and jump in handling the plastic glass of Sprite when it comes with its exploding bubbles.

Ah, but one gets swept up
in the airport throng, all those workaday faces,
faintly pampered and spoiled in the boomer style,
and those elders dressed like children for flying
in hi-tech sneakers and polychrome catsuits,
and those gum-chewing attendants taking tickets
while keeping up a running flirtation with a uniformed bystander, a stoic blond pilot --
all so normal, who could resist
this vault into the impossible?

Your sweat has slowly dried. Your praying neighbor
has fallen asleep, emitting an odor of cardamom.
His briefcase seems to have deflated.
Perhaps not this time, then.

But the possibility of impossibility will keep drawing us back
to this scrape against the numbed sky,
to this sleek sheathed tangle of color-coded wires, these million rivets, the wing
like a frozen lake at your elbow.

The following is excerpted from Robert Graves' The Greek Myths, Complete Edition, published by Penguin Books in 1992 (based on the two-volume series first published in 1955). His footnotes on the variations on the myth and its connections with/ parallels to other myths are interesting (although I've omitted a couple of particularly esoteric entries):

The parentage of Daedalus is disputed. His mother is named Alcippe b some; by others, Merope; by still others, Iphinoe; and all give him a different father, though it is generally agreed that he belonged to the royal house of Athens, which claimed descent from Erechtheus. He was a wonderful smith, have been instructed in his art by Athene herself.

One of his apprentices, Talos the son of his sister Polycaste, or Perdix, had already surpassed him in craftsmanship while only twelve years old. Talos happened one day to pick up the jawbone of a serpant or, some say, a fish's spine; and, finding that he could use it to cut a stick in half, copied it in iron and thus invented the saw. This, and other inventions of his--such as the potter's wheel, and the compass for making out circles--secured him a great reputation at Athens, and Daedalus, who himself claimed to have forged the first saw, soon grew unbearably jealous. Leading Talos up to the roof of Athene's temple on the Acropolis, he pointed out certain distant sights, and suddenly toppled him over the edge. Yet, for all his jealousy, he would have done Talos no harm had he not suspected him of incestuous relations with his mother Polycaste. Daedalus then hurried down to the foot of the Acropolis, and thrust Talos's corpse into a bag, proposing to bury it secretly. When challenged by passers-by, he explained that he had piously taken up a dead serpant, as the law required--which was not entirely untrue, Talos being an Erechtheid--but there were blood-stains on the bag, and his crime did not escape detection, whereupon the Areiopagus banished him for murder. According to another account he fled before the trial could take place.

Now, the soul of Talos--whom some call Calus, Circinus, or Tantalus--flew off in the form of a partridge, but his body was buried where it had fallen. Polycaste hanged herself when she heard of his death, and the Athenians built a sanctuary in her honor beside the Acropolis.

Daedalus took refuge in one of the Attic demes, whose people are named Daedalids after him; and then in Cretan Cnossus, where King Minos delighted to welcome so skilled a craftsman. He lived there for some time, at peace and in high favor, until Minos, learning that he had helpled Pasiphae to couple with Poseidon's white bull, locked him up for a while in the Labyrinth, together with his son Icarus, whose mother, Naucrate, was one of Minos's slaves; but Pasiphae freed them both.

It was not easy, however, to escape from Crete, since Minos kept all his ships under military guard, and now offered a huge reward for his apprehension. But Daedalus made a pair of wings for himself, and another for Icarus, the quill feathers of which were threaded together, but the smaller ones held in place by wax. Having tied on Icarus's pair for him, he said with tears in his eyes: 'My son, be warned! Neither soar too high, lest the sun melt the wax; nor swoop too low, lest the feathers be wetted by the sea.' Then he slipped his arms into his own pair of wings and they flew off. 'Follow me closely,' he cried, 'do not set your own course!'

As they sped away from the island in a north-easterly direction, flapping their wings, the fisherman, shepards, and ploughmen who gazed upwards mistook them for gods.

They had left Naxos, Delos, and Paros behind them on the left hand, and were leaving Lebynthos and Calymne behind on the right, when Icarus disobeyed his father's instructions and began soaring towards the sun, rejoiced by the lift of his great sweeping wings. Presently, when Daedalus looked over his shoulder, he could no longer see Icarus; but scatter feathers floated on the waves below. The heat of the sun had melted the wax, and Icarus had fallen into the sea and drowned. Daedalus circled around, until the corpse rose to the surface, and then carried it to the near-by island now called Icaria, where he buried it. A partridge sat perched on a holm-oak and watched him, chattering for delight--the soul of his sister Polycaste, at last avenged. This island has now given its name to the surrounding sea.

But some, disbelieving the story, say that Daedalus fled from Crete in a boat provided by Pasiphae; and that, on their way to Sicily, they were about to disembark at a small island, when Icarus fell into the sea and drowned. They add that it was Hercules who buried Icarus; in gratitude for which, Daedalus made so lifelike a statue of him at Pisa that Heracles mistook it for a rival and felled it with a stone. Others say that Daedalus invented sails, not wings, as a means of outstripping Minos's galleys; and that Icarus, steering carelessly, was drowned when their boat capsized.

Daedalus flew westward until, alighting at Cumae near Naples, he dedicated his wings to Apollo there, and built him a golden-roofed temple. Afterwards, he visited Camicus in Sicily, where he was hospitably received by King Cocalus, and lived among the Sicilians, enjoying great fame and erecting many fine buildings.

Meanwhile, Minos had raised a considerable fleet, and set out in search of Daedalus. He brought with him a Triton shell, and wherever he went promised to reward anyone who could pass a linen thread through it: a problem which, he knew, Daedalus alone would be able to solve. Arrived at Camicus, he offered the shell to Cocalus, who undertook to have it threaded; and, sure enough, Daedalus found out how to do this. Fastening a gossamer thread to an ant, he bored a hole at the point of the shell and lured the ant up the spirals by smearing honey on the edges of the hole. Then he tied the linen thread to the other end of the gossamer and drew that through as well. Cocalus returned the threaded shell, claiming the reward, and Minos, assured that he had at last found Daedalus's hiding place, demanded his surrender. But Cocalus's daughters were loth to lose Daedalus, who made them such beautiful toys, and with his help they concocted a plot. Daedalus led a pipe through the roof of the bathroom, down which they poured boiling water or, some say, pitch upon Minos, while he luxuriated in a warm bath. Cocalus, who may well have been implicated in the plot, returned the corpse to the Cretans, saying that Minos had stumbled over a rug and fallen into a cauldron of boiling water.

Minos's followers buried him with great pomp, and Zeus made him a judge of the dead in Tartarus, with his brother Rhadamanthys and his enemy Aeacus as colleagues. Since Minos's tomb occupied the center of Aphrodite's temple at Camicus, he was honored there for many generations by great crowds of Sicilians who came to worship Aphrodite. In the end, his bones were returned to Crete by Theron, the tyrant of Acragas.

After Minos's death the Cretans fell into complete disorder, because their main fleet was burned by the Sicilians. Of the crews who were forced to remain overseas, some built the city of Minoa, close to the beach where they had landed; others, the city of Hyria in Messapia; still others, marching into the centre of Sicily, fortified a hill which became the city of Enguos, so called from a spring which flows close by. There they built a temple of the Mothers, whom they continued to honor greatly, as in their native Crete.

But Daedalus left Sicily to join Iolaus, the nephew and charioteer of Tirynthian Heracles, who led a body of Athenians and Thespians to Sardinia. May of his works survive to this day in Sardinia; they are called Daedalia.

Now, Talos was also the name of Minos's bull-headed bronze servant, given him by Zeus to guard Crete. Some say that he was a survivor of the brazen race who sprang from the ash-trees; others, that he was forged by Hephaestus in Sardinia, and that he had a single vein which ran from his neck down to his ankles, where it was stoppered by a brass pin. It was his task to run thrice daily around the island of Crete and throw rocks at any foreign ship; and also to go thrice yearly, at a more leisurely pace, through the villages of Crete, displaying Minos's laws inscribed on brazen tablets. When the Sardinians tried to invade the island, Talos made himself red-hot in a fire and destroyed them all with his burning embrace, grinning fiercely; hence the expression 'a Sardonic grin'. In the end, Medea killed Talos by pulling out the pin and letting his life-blood escape; though some say that Poeas the Argonaut wounded him in the ankle with a poisoned arrow.

***********

Footnotes:

1) Hephaestus is sometimes described as Hera's son by Talos, and Talos as Daedalus's young nephew; but Daedalus was a junior member of the House of Erechtheus, whcih was founded long after the birth of Hephaestus. Such chronological discrepancies are the rule in mythology. Daedalus ("bright" or "cunningly wrought"), Talos ("sufferer"), and Hephaestus ("he who shines by day") are shown by the similarity of their attributes to be merely different titles of the same mythical character. Icarus (from io-carios, 'dedicated to the Moon-goddess Car') may be yet another of his titles. For Hephaestus the smith-god married Aphrodite, to whom the partridge was sacred; the sister of Daedalus the smith was called Perdix ('partridge'); the soul of Talos the smith flew off as a partridge; a partridge appeared at the burial of Daedalus's son Icarus. Besides, Hephaestus was flung from Olympus; Talos was flung from the Acropolis. Hephaestus hobbled when he walked; one of Talos's names was Tantalus ('hobbling, or lurching'); a cock-partridge hobbles in his love-dance, holding one heel ready to strike at rivals. Moreover, the Latin god Vulcan hobbled. His cult had been introduced from Crete, where he was called Velchanus and had a cock for his emblem, because the cock crows at dawn and was therefore appropriate to a Sun-hero. But the cock did not reach Crete until the sixth century B.C., and is likely to have displaced the partridge as Velchanus's bird.

2. It seems that in the spring an erotic partridge dance was performed in honour of the Moon-goddess, and that the male dancers hobbled and wore wings. In Palestine this ceremony, called the Pesach ('the hobbling') was, according to Jerome, still performed at Beth-Hoglah ('the Shrine of the Hobbler'), where the devotees danced in a spiral. Beth-Hoglah is identified with 'the threshing-floor of Atad', on which mourning was made for the lame King Jacob, whose name may mean Jah Aceb ('the heel-god'). Jeremiah warns the Jews not to take part in these orgiastic Canaanite rites, quoting: 'The partridge gathereth young that she hath not brought forth.' Anaphe, an islad to the north of Crete, with which Minos made a treaty, was famous in antiquity for migrant partridges.

3. The myth of Daedalus and Talos, like its variant, the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, seems to combine the ritual of burning the solar king's surrogate, who had put on eagle's wings, in the spring bonfire--when the Palestinian New Year began--with the rituals of flinging the partridge-winged pharmacos, a similar surrogate, off a cliff into the sea, and of pricking the king in the heel with a poisoned arrow. But the fisherman's and peasant's admiration of the flying Daedalus is probably borrowed from an icon of the winged Perseus or Marduk.

4. In one sense the labyrinth from which Daedalus and Icarus escaped was the mosaic floor with the maze pattern, which they had to follow in the ritual partridge dance; but Daedalus's escape to Sicily, Cumae, and Sardinia refers perhaps to the flight of the native bronze-workers from Crete as the result of successive Hellenic invasions. The ruse of the Triton shell, and Minos's burial in a shrine of Aphrodite to whom this shell was sacred, suggest that Minos was also, in this context, regarded as Hephaestus, the Sea-goddess's lover. His death in a bath is an incident that has apparently becomed detached from the myth of Nisus and Scylla; Nisus's Celtic counterpoint, Llew Llaw, was killed in a bath by a trick; and so was another sacred King, Agamemnon of Mycenae.

5. The name Naucrate ('sea-power') records the historical consequences of Minos's defeat in Sicily--the passing of sea-power from Cretan into Greek hands. That she was one of Minos's slaves suggests a palace revolution of Hellenic mercenaries at Cnossus.

6. If Polycaste, the other name of Talos's mother Perdix, means polycassitere, 'much tin,' it belongs to the myth of the bronze man, Talos's namesake. Cretan supremacy depended largely on plentiful supplies of tin, to mix with Cyprian copper; according to Professor Christopher Hawkes, the nearest source was the island of Majorca.

7. Talos is said by Hesychius to be a name for the Sun; originally, therefore, Talos will have coursed only once a day around Crete. Perhaps, however, the harbors of Crete were guarded against pirates by three watches that sent out patrols. And since Talos the Sun was also called Taurus ('the bull'), his thrice-yearly visit to the villages was probably a royal progress of the Sun-king, wearing his ritual bull-mask--the Cretan year being divided into three seasons. Talos's red-hot embrace may record the human burnt sacrifices offered to Moloch, alias Melkarth, who was worshipped at Corinth at Melicertes, and probably also known in Crete. Since this Talos came from Sardinia, where Daedalus was said to have fled when pursued by Minos, and was at the same time Zeus's present to Minos, the mythographers have simplified the story by giving Hephaestus, rather than Daedalus, credit for its construction; Hephaestus and Daedalus being the same character. The sardonicus risus, or rictus, a twisting of the facial muscles, symptomatic of lock-jaw, was perhaps so called because the stag-man of early Sardinian bronzes wears the same mirthless, gaping grin.

8. Talos's single vein belongs to the mystery of early bronze casting by the cire-perdue method. First, the smith made a beeswax image which he coated with a layer of clay, and laid in an oven. As soon as the clay had been well baked he pierced the spot between heel and ankle, so that the hot wax ran out and left a mold, into which moulton bronze could be poured. When he had filled this, and the metal inside had cooled, he broke the clay, leaving a bronze image of the same shape as the original wax one. The Cretans brought the cire-perdue method to Sardinia, together with the Daedalus cult. Since Daedalus learned his craft from Athene, who was known as Medea at Corinth, the story of Talos's death may have been a misreading of an icon which showed Athene demonstrating the cire-perdue method. The tradition that melted wax caused Icarus's death seems to belong, rather, to the myth of his cousin Talos; because Talos the bronze man is closely connected with his namesake, the worker in bronze and the reputed inventor of compasses.

11. Although Daedalus ranks as an Athenian, because of the Attic deme named in his honor, the Daedalic crafts were introduced into Attica from Crete, not contrariwise. They toys that he made for the daughters of Cocalus are likely to have been dolls with moveable limbs, like those which pleased Pasiphae and her daughter Ariadne, and which seem to have been used in the Attic tree cult of Erigone. At any rate, Polycaste, Daedalus's sister, hanged herself, as did two Erigones and Ariadne herself.

Icarus at Lookingglass

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Man's search for flight--A Miscellany

The Architect's Brother

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Resources

Perdix is for Partridge

Sunday, September 6, 2009

John Updike's Icarus

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Robert Graves on Daedalus

Friday, July 3, 2009

Daedalus and Perdix in Ovid's Metamorphoses

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